Posted on 10/21/2006 4:52:03 AM PDT by NYer
It took you all night to say that? After so many had pressed you before? Well, sorry Marajade. I don't buy it.
What more can I say?
Is your bishop married?
-A8
Oh.. I see, and telling Catholics that they put the Pope on the same level as God is not making it personal after said poster had several Catholics explain to him/her that wasn't the case? Again, I would like to point out to you your own rules of not reading the mind of other posters. Or does that only apply to us Catholics?
Every confession is subject to ridicule on an open thread. Atheists post here as well as theists. Catholics as well as Protestants, Mormons and Baptists, Scientologists and so on.
If a poster cannot handle the ridicule, he should limit himself to the closed threads - the devotionals, prayer threads and caucuses. They are treated like a closed door assembly - challenges and ridicule are removed.
-A8
Excellent.
Well, let me show you what your rules say on your profile page:
Attributing motive to an author is permitted – reading the mind of another poster is not.
Please show me where you have made that qualification on your profile page. Where have you included belief systems, confessions, organizations, etc.?
This poster, me, tried to explain that Catholics don't worship the Pope as God. That poster came back and told us you do. That is reading the mind of a poster and that IS calling the poster a liar when said poster had already explained that we don't.
You have also not removed a post where Catholics were called devils. I don't care how that is spun, that is what was said. This same poster called me a coward on another thread about a month ago to which you never replied to my call to you for help and you let that stand!!!
The holy Roman Catholic church does not recognize married bishops as valid as this article makes clear:
ArchBishop Installs 4 Married Bishops
From the article:
Milingo has said that the head of the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops has demanded he send a letter of repentance by Oct. 15 to Pope Benedict XVI or face "canonical suspension."
The Vatican said Milingo violated church law when he created "the so-called `Married Priests Now' association," and when he previously celebrated Mass with married clergy. A "canonical suspension" would bar Milingo from ordaining priests, leading Mass and performing other sacraments, according to the Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit writer and expert on the church.
Milingo, 76, has had a troubled relationship with the Vatican for years.
So the Vatican, the home of the head of the Roman Catholic church, has established that their bishops can't be married. The bible says that "episkopos" can be married. No matter how you slice it, they're not the same thing. Which, as I said, it my point.
The qualification that reading the mind applies to an individual poster is right here:
I honor and respect passion towards God. That is very fitting and admirable, to me.
I think a lot of us are prone to getting our knickers in a twist out of our own stuff and out of our RELIGIOUS stuff instead of out of our PASSION TOWARD AND FOR GOD.
I think that Roman oriented threads are a lot like Calvinist, Pentecostal, Trinitarian, Sabbitarian etc. threads wherein a group seeks to emphasize or highlight or put forward or defend their spiritual distinctives. But a lot of time, it's their personal pet biases, RELIGIOUS distinctives [as opposed to and vs truly spiritual ones--and it's not the topic per se but the heart attitudes, I think, that make the difference.
Certainly we are called and challenged in Scripture and by Christ's character and by the excellent RM to follow Christ--even to follow the RM's great example, bless his tireles sheart . . . and to make our words as gracious as we can manage.
I also think we are called by Christ's example and Scripture to have pretty thick skins and to avoid undue offense and even a lot of deliberate offense. Offense can be sent. Offense can be assumed to have been sent when it wasn't. Offense can be out of balance with a 1,500 lb response to a 1.5 ounce stimulus.
But offense blesses no one.
Sometimes satire and hyperbole help highlight certain points or arguments and sometimes seem more than a little fitting. Sometimes they add needed humor. But like as not, they are more hazardous and more of a mixture in motive than they are worth.
I've probably been more assaulted by deliberate harsh, viscious personal attacks hereon than most Freepers I know. I haven't always responded with graciousness. I haven't always turned the other cheek.
But I've been pretty good at avoiding whining, most of the time, about the personal attacks.
And, by God's grace and the patient example of the tireless RM, I've learned to remove personal stuff from virtually all my posts. I virtually never attack anyone's personhood, sanity, heart etc. anymore. I'm very thankful for my mentors hereon in helping me grow up in that regard, at least a little more.
A lot of us can be passionate about our football team, baseball team, music idols, political idols etc. And, it's good we can be excited about some things in life. Apathy is deadly.
But I think that passion about any human group is often misplaced, at least out of balance. Even passion about mostly correct human groups is usually out of balance, ill placed.
GOD ALONE IS WORTHY.
GOD ALONE IS WORTHY.
GOD ALONE IS WORTHY OUR DEEPEST, MOST INTENSE PASSIONS.
And we really don't need to defend Him. We may need to defend our rights to worship Him in Spirit and in Truth. But He is beyond defense.
And if our organizations, even super correct organizations, are not demonstrating God's miraculous confirmations in the individual hearts and lives of their members and reaching out--to a hurting world--ongoingly, routinely, then I doubt seriously that they are very worthy of our passion, much at all.
I think that there are likely individual congregations in most all the remotely Scriptural Christian organizations wherein God is moving mightily and blessing people supernaturally ongoingly. And, probably, the opposite is true in the same Christian organizations.
Stereotypes are lesser or greater inaccuracies--virtually never wholesale true about all the groups in an organization--especially a Christian organization.
So I think humility about my own organization is highly in order and highly wisdom.
I've been around Pentecostalism all my life. I know it's outrageous flaws. But I also know much about the outrageous flaws of about every other commonly known Christian organization. None are immune. To pretend otherwise seems, to me, to be uninformed or blind to the truth due to bias or whatever.
It is normal to be devoted to one's chosen group. There are many reasons we are devoted which have little to do with Biblical faithfulness. And, if one is going to bother with a Christian group, I hope one can be devoted to it or change groups. This is not, after all, tiddledee winks. These ARE eternal issues we wrestle with in our Christian groups.
But if our organizations are worth anything TO GOD OR TO MAN, then they are reasonably quite beyond needing our getting all proud and puffed up about defending this or that aspect of them. We can't add any to our height or insure the length of our days. Regardless of how strident, fierce, justified, loud, haughty, angry, self-righteous, . . . . whatever . . . our defenses of our particular group or organization . . . such defenses are highly unlikely to add or subtract anything even very noticable to the organization and less so even to The Kingdom of God. At best such is likely to be chaff. Why all the intense emotion about what will likely be functional chaff even if it's not theological chaff?
Pride, Ego is an inadequate and self-belitting motivation. The need to be right is similarly inadequate as a motivation and likely to be born of insecurities better taken to The Cross and put on the altar with a plea for wholeness and healing from our Lord Jesus.
A lot of us get the grandiose notion that our splendid prose will win hearts and influence people. Apart from Holy Spirit's inner working in the hearts, spirits and minds of our readers, our best, even most saintly prose will be utter chaff.
And the more fierce hostile stuff will be worse than chaff, on average, if not virtually all the time.
If our goal is to become like and demonstrate Jesus, such is the opposite direction. We are rarely in the position of driving the money changers out of the Temple here. And I have yet to see a single case of feeling God anointed and appointed someone to do so . . . unless it's the current tireless RM, Bless his courageous soul.
I disagree with many hereon fiercely. Some of the doctrines I see posted hereon seem to me to come straight from the pit of hell. But those on the other side feel similarly about stuff they disagree with.
And, we are just not appointed to throw lightening bolts and fire and brimstone at one another hereon. Some may personally feel it's their gifting and calling but I have yet to feel the slightest confirmation in my heart and spirit--even about my own urges to do so.
There will be an abundance of fire and brimstone and lightening bolts in the coming months and years . . . at the hand of God Himself and of His Angelic hosts. We need not presume upon their roles nor hasten such horrors amongst us hereon.
And, then there's JimRob. I think all of us have tended to minimize his standard of ALL CONSERVATIVES, FREEPERS are brothers and sisters based upon the Constitution and upon JimRob's standards, goals and policies hereon. As I understand him more and more, HE REALLY DOES DESIRE AND EXPECT US TO CHARITABLY FEEL GRACIOUS AND ACT GRACIOUSLY TOWARD ONE ANOTHER BASED ON OUR SHARED VALUES AND GOALS--ABOVE ALL OUR OTHER VALUES AND GOALS.
That's a rather minimally high Christian brotherly standard. Why do we Christians make such a poor showing of exemplifying it? He asks so little of us in return for giving so much to us with FR.
We track mud through his living room. We scream about the color of the paint on the walls. We don't like his decor. We carp about some of his friends and relatives. And mostly, he asks us to just get alone and support one another in our shared goals. And we fail so miserably at that so often. It's a wonder his keyboard is not chronically shorted out by tears.
Therefore what?
I don't know. Just sharing my heart. I love Roman believers and feel a great kinship with a fair number of them. I'm aware of the flaws. I'm aware of a lot of predictions and pontifications about end times stuff related thereto.
BUT ALL OF US SEE THROUGH THE GLASS DARKLY.
And none of our organizations; none of our congregations are flawless. NONE.
We have such a precious, priceless forum here. But it is routinely trashed and stinks worse than a barnyard because of how we treat one another. And yet we claim to be Christian. Something's very wrong with that picture.
I'm not looking down my nose at anyone. I'm must groping around about the issues. I think we can do better. We must do better if we truly Love Jesus.
If we don't truly Love Jesus, then what are we doing calling ourselves Christians and daring to pontificate on the forum under the label "Christian?"
So well said Quix. Bless you.
Why didn't David kill Saul when Saul used the cave in which David was hiding to relieve himself?
Why did Paul retract his statement in Acts 23:5?
Here's the danger. If God might just at any time "lift the anointing and give it to someone else", then we would have no way of knowing who has the anointing. Throughout all of redemptive history, "the gifts and calling are irrevocable" (Rom 11:29). That notion that God might just (or maybe just did) "lift the anointing and give it to someone else", disconnects form and matter, word and witness, spirit and sacrament. It is a form of gnosticism that completely undermines the possibility of Church authority, for everyone gets to determine on his own who has the anointing, and that is an entirely subjective endeavor. But Jesus *breathed* on the Apostles. And the Apostles *laid hands* on the bishops. There was a physical endowment of the ordination authority they received through this sacramental act. The Church has always taught that no one who has been validly ordained can be unordained, just as one who has been baptized cannot be unbaptized (even if he renounces his baptism). If he repents and returns to Christ, he is not to be re-baptized, because his baptism remains with him eternally. And so does his ordination gift. That is (in part) why Paul tells Timothy not to be hasty in the laying on of hands. Sacraments cannot be undone.
-A8
There's a little bit of a double standard going on here. I'm about to withdraw all of my financial support to an organization that would allow such insults towards Catholics to stand. I can't in good faith or conscience support it.
= = = =
Blundering in where angels fear to tread here . . .
We each have to be stewards before God of all our time and resources.
But I hope you reconsider. ALL BELIEVING CATEGORIES HEREON have posters which are ornery sometimes to the max. No organization, congregation is represented only by benign, gracious saints, hereon.
Roman believers as well as any other label of believers hereon have dished it out as well as they've taken it. Pretending otherwise, it not very consistent with reality hereon, to me.
The RM does a thankless volunteer job. He does far better than any other such in the years FR has been in existence. He is more fair; more responsibly diligent; more balanced; more anointed; more discerning; more gracious; more kind; more faithful to God in his manner and operations . . . than all the rest combined, imho. Certainly than any other individual in such a role. I personally don't think any of us could do any better.
Wearing chips on our shoulders is not helpful to dialogue nor to brotherhood. Being human and engaging in emotional dialogue about religious--even spiritual--issues--is going to be messy. Those seeking grace ought to extend it. And all of us need it.
-A8
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